In a setback for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress candidate Rupinder Singh Koonar on Monday won the election to Karanpur assembly seat, defeating by 11,283 votes saffron party's Surendra Pal Singh who had already sworn in as a minister.
According to the chief electoral office, Koonar bagged 94,950 votes while Singh got 83,667 after 18 rounds of counting.
"I am thankful to the people of Karanpur who voted for me... even central ministers had come for campaigning [but] people rejected them and made democracy win," Koonar, whose late father Gurmeet Singh earlier held the seat, said after winning the election.
Counting was held on 17 counters at Dr Bheemrao Ambedkar Government College in Sriganganagar, the district under which the constituency comes.
The seat went under polling on Friday, January 5, with a total voter turnout of 81.38 per cent being recorded.
The election for the seat was postponed due to the demise of Congress candidate and then MLA Gurmeet Singh Koonar. Koonar's son Rupinder Singh was then fielded by the Congress from the seat.
Surendra Pal Singh was inducted into the Rajasthan ministry after the BJP won the recently concluded assembly polls, bagging 115 of the 199 seats.
While rules say that non-legislators can be included as ministers with the condition that they get elected within six months, former chief minister and senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot had called it a clear violation of the code of conduct and an attempt to influence the voters there.
In the Rajasthan assembly polls held on November 25, BJP won 115 seats and Congress 69. The counting of votes happened on December 3.
BJP's Bhajanlal Sharma took oath as Chief Minister on December 15. Newly elected MLAs Diya Kumari and Premchand Bairwa were made deputy chief ministers.
